After the NYC winter the Californian sun seems unrelenting. One glorious day folding like melting fudge into the next.

91 degrees today. A rare winter storm this weekend. That’s what they say.

My Russian friend makes thick black, sweet coffee. We sit on her verandah overlooking the sea. The dogs lay on their backs in the sun.

Anthony calls and talks my ear off. His brother is in NYC with Amelia enjoying his birthday.

A 5 year old boy shoots his 2 year old sister with a gun recently purchased for him by his father. I find a website devoted to pictures of white children/babies holding firearms. It reminds me of Somalian and Iranian militia children holding semi automatic weapons.

Here it is: Kids With Guns. I just checked and unsurprisingly ‘kids corner’ has been removed since yesterday.

These people, so it seems, are waiting for the government to come and change their lives irrevocably.

Part of me sympathises with those folk. The high minded elite looking down upon them scornfully.

At 8pm I take the car into Venice and meet Anthony at a gallery called Obsolete. Amanda Demme’s vernisage.

The rather beautiful photographs are printed on textured paper. Like canvas. It is distracting and tacky. It’s a problem.

We eat meatballs and salad and fresh almonds.

A tribe of scarified women in their 60’s huddle on a $100k sofa and gossip. Their surgeries performed to be seen. What’s the point of spending that much money on plastic surgery unless you can see it?

Amanda introduces me to Sara Gilbert and her other. Many people are wearing hats. Wide brims. Beaver rather than rabbit.

I am wearing a midnight blue velvet suit and red shoes.

A young actor greets me with a hug. He asks me in that way what I’ve been up to. He knows. I tell him anyway. “I read about that.” He exclaims. “You’re the real deal.” That’s the difference between the gays and the straights.

Straight people know I’m a fucking hero. The gays, huddled around teacher are fucking terrified of me.

And so they should be.

Outside we meet Joaquin Phoenix. Anthony made a film with him. I have not seen him since before Heath died. A flicker of recognition but no more. He looks like he is made of pale green wax. He is stick thin. He looks like a Shropshire farmer.

He said to Anthony, “I hear you’ve been making sober calls. Don’t call me.” We laugh.

It’s funny.

After the show we have dinner at Gjelina with two art collectors. Pizza and pudding. Everybody at the table knows someone else in the restaurant. We receive. I forget to stand for one grand dame. She stares at me frostily.

I know what she’s thinking. She’s wondering if I left my manners in the jail.

Sitting up all night searching for images, videos, quotes from a long life.

Constructing a narrative where all events harmonize. Where color and texture blend from one image to another. Telling public and private stories simultaneously.

As for the rest? My other life?

I had tea with a producer on Friday ostensibly to talk about my new film…then unexpectedly he asked me to read a script which they are looking for a director.

It arrived immediately and it is beautiful. It will take me to Europe for a year. To Italy.

I drove back up the 10…happy, joyous and free. Perhaps the hell of the last two years is truly coming to an end?

Dinner in Venice, then bumped into my ‘friend with benefits’. He said, although drunk, that he was embarrassed to introduce me to his friends because I am so much older. I told him that was like me being embarrassed by his being a jew or gay…I walked away. He’s a kid. What do I expect?

I explained to Robby why I was feeling so optimistic, hours before the script was mentioned. Looking out over LA from the 13th floor.

I explained why seeing the man I once loved in love was so reassuring.

To be excluded from the life of one for whom I had been so instrumental…had driven me insane.

The emotional investment in another, even when that relationship changes into something else…well…one is always looking to recoup.

The dividend…was to see him happy. I saw irrefutable evidence that all our hard and painful, beautiful and passionate time together…was worth it.

I don’t need, nor do I deserve to have the enduring love of another to make me happy…all I needed to know was that he, he who I love…was loved.

It is very simple to me…though confusing for most.

My ‘failed relationship’ has meaning now. A context.

During the past two years I have written so often about finding peace. Peace and understanding. This is it! I announced grandly…this is the peace I have been searching for! Well, I was wrong.

It was merely an illusion. A false hope. The glaring eyes of many storms…a momentary peace…which I mistakenly assumed would last. The 100 foot waves continued to break over the bow and I was lost again.

Seeing those two men pressed together, harmonious, happy…well…who couldn’t want for them what I was never able to achieve?

I know what you think…that I deserve what I get, that I am not very nice, that I have been very cruel. Well, it’s true. I have been cruel and mean but I don’t think it was anything other than necessary for us to go through what we went through.

The only people, as I have written before who are deserving of my apology…are his parents and sister who I demanded into our violent storm, who I insulted and maligned.

For that I am truly sorry.

I have no idea, ultimately, if he intended for me specifically to see those things but he must have known. Wether he intended to try making me jealous..well..that’s another consideration and we’ll leave it at that.

What I have learned these past few years is that (in a quieter less public way) so many men and women are tortured by love…in and out of love. Choosing inappropriate partners, chasing hopeless dreams.

The twins are living here with their friend Kevin. They move out on the 26th. We cook, we prepare good food. We eat at the table, we use the linen napkins before they are packed up or sold.

They drink red wine from crystal glasses they have no idea are as valuable as they are.

I know that these formal dinners are at odds not just with these youth but with all youth.

I am trapped in another universe, insensitive to their discomfort. They have no use for anything I know.

I am not sad. All I have to do is re-imagine life in jail and I am delivered from self-pity.

I have tried going back to AA but I’ve no stomach for it, nor the people. I am done with AA in LA. It’s over. Over.

Occasionally I have to go back to court and they hand me more papers to add to the huge stack I already have on my desk.

You can feel that neither the judge nor the DA has the enthusiasm for the case now I am not incarcerated.

Certainly, with the serious press and the ACLU in pursuit of answers re. my illegal incarceration and with a huge law suit in the offing…I can’t imagine that it’s party time at the DA’s office when they mention my name.

Anne Marie the special DA looked positively miserable when we saw her yesterday. Her hair looked good tho. Nicely quaffed and bouncy.

She was wearing a very chic black, cashmere coat belted at the waist with dramatic lapels and long hem line.

I was a bit hard on her in earlier blogs. She is prettier than Michelle Bachman.

I am most eager to go to court. To clear my name. To start the law suit against the realtor who started all this mess.

I am not allowed to sue him whilst we are in this criminal tangle. That’s the law…apparently.

The twins birthday on Monday. They will be 22 years old. Remember last year? How they bounced down stairs in the morning and sang Dave Mathews songs?

I met Miles when he was 19.

Robby has fallen for someone and my surrogate child spends nights on end away from the house with his new love.

I want him to be safe, he looks at me like I’m an idiot when I remind him to be true to himself.

Watching Robby grow into a fully formed young man, the young man he wants to be…not who I want him to be.

He reminds me of another young man who liberated himself from the closet not so long ago. Before my very eyes.

There are so many similarities. Robby and Jake. But the outcomes are so different.

Again, I play over those past events. The events of that doomed love affair. Wishing I had done things differently. Wishing I could have helped rather than hindered.

The death of love.

Mostly, as Robby reveals who he is, I have the same feeling I had when Jake came out. That he shouldn’t be betrayed, that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made.

It was so hard to let him go.

Now I can’t even remember that he was beside me in Paris or London or New York…because, I suppose…he was a ghost or I was never truly allowed to enjoy our time together.

He was tortured by self doubt. Guilt.

Sometime, I wish I could call him and listen to his voice, listen to his loves and losses. How he has evolved.

Then, seconds later, I know that I don’t want to hear anything. That it would still be too painful. Isn’t that absurd?

We are strangers. We are strangers. We will remain forever…strangers.

If I had lived in NYC when I was seeing him things would have been different. We both needed continuity. The goodbyes destroyed me. Every time he said goodbye. I was bereft.

Well, that was then…but even so, just writing about him again…my whole body ached. He was consuming and passionate and never mine to have.

Meanwhile on twitter Roseanne and I have been publicly sharing our philosophies and mutual revulsion of the way things are. Two old people meeting in the virtual town square putting the world back together the way we think it should be.

For some reason best known to WordPress my entire private collection of blogs (over 350) suddenly became readable. Past blogs that had been hidden from view.

I am now undoing what was done. Annoying.

Yesterday was altogether the most satisfying day I have had for a long, long time.

Early mornings with the boys, lunch in Hollywood, afternoon with lawyers (more will be revealed at a later date) and finally a spectacular party in the hills. A gay party, you know the kind…the sort that usually terrifies me…but on this occasion was great fun.

It was a cold night in LA and I was the only one wearing a coat. The first time I have been appropriately dressed at that house.

I felt, yet again, as if I had left that judgmental Duncan back in the jail so was free to enjoy the party. This has been a long time coming, this freedom. A delightful French actor to sit with. Many people told me how sorry they were that I had been in jail, that it seemed so wrong.

I was surprised by the reaction. Part of my fear of going there was the fantasy I had that people disapproved…in fact, the opposite was true.

I hadn’t realized that people cared as much as they do. Why is that so hard for me to believe?

“Don’t pester old film makers about your film making. I don’t care about your process, your poverty or your inertia. All I care about is that you make a film. Just do it and make it good.” Duncan Roy June 2011

So, here I am again. Good morning hipsters! I spent an hour in the garden at 7am weeding and watering. It looks just dandy. Then I came in and within two minutes I had broken a sugar bowl, a cafetière and jammed my fingers into a draw.

I AM ONE CLUMSY QUEEN.

Yesterday Gabe and I went to Paradise Cove Beach Cafe on the PCH for lunch. We were charged $5 each for walking from the PCH where we parked into the restaurant rather than paying $3 to use their car park. I thought they were kidding. A $5 ‘walking fee’? Rip Off USA. It made me so mad. Gabe just looked bemused as I let the manager have two barrels of shit. In turn the manager just looked at the crazy man and rolled over like a puppy.

He offered us a beach side table, a waitress with psychiatric training and a refund.

A $5 walking fee? How can they get away with that shit?

We ate their mediocre ribs, drank their weak tea, sat on their grubby beach. Thankfully we sat next to an attractive married couple from Hollywood who really were worth meeting. He sells sex toys on-line. They were like a gay couple. Hot tub parties and three ways. I really liked them. She said that when they have a baby they might calm down a bit.

Gabe sat on my lap and held my hand, massaged my fingers. It was so sweet. We were the only gays on the beach. The out of towners looked at us suspiciously. Yet again I felt uncomfortable. Fuck! When I was with the Penguin/Matt/Jamie I didn’t care. Because, I suppose, when I was with them I didn’t care what other people thought. It was just us…and as I have said before: I would have defended my love with my life.

After lunch we investigated the pier, the peace paddle (some hippy event) we talked for ages to a lady who had worked in India on an ashram who now sells South Indian food from a food truck. She told us dolefully how the city of LA is targeting the food truck community (there are 500 of them) with all sorts of horrible rules. What ever happened to American innovation being encouraged and celebrated?

(Even the sex toy guy is despondent about how small businesses are treated. He is moving his cash to Brazil.)

Food trucks are a recessionary necessity. A perfect response.

The previous day Anna and I had been on Abbot Kinney. The first Friday of every month the streets has a kind of street party. The galleries open late and every thirty feet there is a food truck. It was so much fun. We bumped into Meg Ryan and her friend Laura Dern.

Anyway, we ate all sorts. We struggled through the crowds. Some man who thought he knew me. Said, “Hey! How are you?” I let him think he knew me. At the end of the conversation he realised who I was and the meeting came to an abrupt ending. This happened in Ojai too. It seems to happen more and more.

Last night I was talking to a young film maker and gave him the advice quoted at the top of the page. Very Ayn Rand of me.

Today I am hiking with Tom. Gabe is coming over to relax. Miles has recovered from his binge. Cooking dinner for us all tonight.

If Elizabeth really had broken up with Arun a few months ago as she claims..why is she having clandestine meetings with Shane Warne in hotel rooms rather than in her Kensington house?

I wonder if Arun remembers my dire warning for him to run as fast as his little legs would carry him when Elizabeth introduced us. Much to his chagrain I sat him down like a good brother and told him that no good would come of knowing Elizabeth…only public shame.

That was when we were filming The Method in Romania when she was publicly toying with him to the amusement of her snotty friends and family.

I wanted to write a bunch of stuff about Elizabeth being a sex addict but I wrote a thousand words and then the computer crashed and it all vanished. I can’t be bothered to write it again.

I was reminiscing about the first time I met Elizabeth and she was laying on the floor of her sitting room…her legs apart, her lips pink and swollen.

I wonder if she remembers telling me about her whipping club in LA? How she loves to ‘take a man in hand’. I wonder if she dominates Shane? He looks like the sort of man who needs to be dominated, coerced, his power stripped from him by a woman, a good..strong woman like Elizabeth. And..of course, we never mention the lesbian interlude. Know about that? I do.

I hear that she was in San Lorenzo last week looking a bit worse for wear. Drunk.

I wonder who is looking after the kid?

The problem with Elizabeth is that she is a mere actress/celebrity when in fact she was born to be a high priestess or warrior princess, acolytes tugging at her skirt. Gladiators hand-picked from the forum to pleasure her.

It was a piss poor, irritating day yesterday. Nothing, it seemed, was going to rescue me from the thankless groaning of harassing renters and the yearning I have to get home.. and quickly. I left my card in the ATM and have mislaid my beastly driving license.

All in all it was pretty ghastly until I went to therapy at 8pm where I sat with my peers and bathed in our shared misery. Suddenly I felt a whole heap better! There really isn’t anything more exhilarating than listening to those who have had a worse day than you.

Look, I could sit here and write about my financial woes. I could entertain you with the menopausal ranting of Irene from Hawaii or I could just let it go. The worse a person complains and harasses the less likely I am to deal with a situation. It’s just the way I am wired.

Many years ago I made a very bad film in Romania called The Method starring Elizabeth Hurley. It was not the best experience of my life (probably one I would rather forget) but it seems I am not going to be afforded that luxury.

The chaotic making of The Method has inspired the Producer of The Method to write and direct a film about the chaotic making of The Method. The premise is thinly disguised. I was prepared to be irritated but after having had a look at the trailer it all looks rather fun. Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing it and am sure that the press will come knocking once they realize that his film is based on our experience of creating what must be one of the worst films ever made.

It heartens me to think that out of strife and stress art can be made. I am not at all worried by how I may/may not be portrayed. I am merely flattered that the very enterprising director/writer moved a mountain to make a film based on our shared experience. We know how difficult that can be, don’t we?

Time passes and tightly held resentments lose their steam. Fruitless anger, the spirited defense of nothing worthwhile, all this ultimately becomes the secret joke we tell ourselves in later years.

There is June Gloom in LA which makes the light very English, all the colours in my house come alive when the sky is gray. Apart from our gray British skies I miss just how damned rude we can be. All these years of living in polite America! I am looking forward to the bawdiness of my country men. Rapier wit coupled with a good wank joke.

I love that we can both be extremely polite and totally vile within seconds.

The first book I ever bought with my own teenage money was the collected works of Hogarth. Bawdy.

I woke up in acceptance. I went to bed with a strange man sleeping on the sofa.

Yesterday morning I found myself explaining what made me happy to a large group of men. I said, “I know when I’m happy because I don’t want to change anything. I don’t want to change the way I feel with drugs or sex or shopping. I don’t want to change where I live or rearrange my apartment. I am just happy with things the way they are right now.”

Lunch with Eric at the Mercantile on Sunset where we ran into Bryan and his friend Carly Chaikin who is the second lead in the film The Last Song starring Miley Cyrus. A very sweet girl. Delicious lunch, lots of fun, I ate duck.

After lunch Eric and I drove to Soho House where we sat on the terrace overlooking Beverly Hills drinking latte-yes I was in a latte state o’mind.

As the day progressed I felt more uncomfortable. There were practical irritations like: HSBC in the UK had closed my bank account for no apparent reason (apparently my crime was dormancy) with money still in it. I cannot pay bills, transfer money, now I expect long conversations with random, computer generated Indian customer service advisors that must take place before I get to the bottom of this.

I received another nasty email from a woman claiming that she was at Kristian’s funeral and that my blogged account of it is all lies. The Mother and Father must be furious that I continue to report how they disrespect our friend in death. I have spoken to many, many people about the funeral and how Kristian’s boyfriend of SEVEN years was told to stay away, how he is now having to fight the family for what is rightfully his-his share of the property that he and Kristian owned in France and his part of the London property.

By the time I took my nap I was feeling decidedly testy.

Had brief chat with NYC friend who seems eager to go bar hopping/hooking up. Whatever he has in mind for himself who am I to judge? He wants to be like all the other gay men with penis privileges.

I tried explaining to him the 12 steps, which was as satisfying as trying to teach a baboon how to knit.

Felt WORSE.

So, a friend of Kristian’s came and took me to dinner-once again at the Mercantile. (I am trying to work my way through their delicious menu.) We talked about Kristian and I shed a tear. This was the first person I had actually sat down with since his death rather that being on the phone or random conversations on Face Book with people who had been denied entry to the funeral and had watched in amazement as Kristian’s coffin was dragged into the church, as Kristian’s mother laughed at the funeral, as she made Kristian’s boy friend of SEVEN years feel so uncomfortable at the wake he had organized he left rather than them.

As we left the restaurant I bumped into a good-looking strawberry blonde man with huge arms. He introduced himself and we exchanged numbers. Later that night the strawberry blond man came over and we talked until 3am. It turns out that he is a porn performer who wants to get out of the porn performer business. I told him that I would introduce him to Jennie. I looked at his work on-line. Getting fucked by men with names like Xavier and Brett. Eagerly blowing other men with huge arms. I thought that maybe my NYC friend would like to hook up with him at a bar.

It was good to talk to him about my own relationship with pornography.

I felt comfortable with him. We were not about to have a conversation about God, he did not have a complicated story. He told me about the men he had dated. The life he has. He looked tired so I told him he could stay over. I hid my gold watch. He slept on the sofa.

Earthquake the following day. I lay in bed as it rumbled through town. Dinner with Anna at Canele on Glendale Blvd. Excellent roast lamb and equally delicious roast vegetables. Met delightful Amanda and delightful Daniel.

Before I signed my contract to appear on Sex Rehab I told my friends that what ever happened to me during the editing of the show I would stay out of the result. That I would let God deal with the details and I would not let any of it be my business. That was until..

OMG! Today, moments ago, I discovered..and I just had to write a blog about my extraordinary discovery..a reader alerted me to a website devoted to people who give a shit about TV! So much of a shit, in fact, that the same sad people spend hours not just watching reality TV but getting so involved that they form ‘opinions’ then spend hours sharing LMAO with complete strangers their ‘opinions’. The fact that these opinions are misguided, uninformed and mostly sophomoric is neither here nor there.

Amongst some occasional intelligent analysis I read about ‘haters’ (apparently I am one) and a huge amount of second rate Kari Ann/Jill/Selma/Kendra ‘diagnosis’ from a bunch of avid reality TV addicts. I really had no idea that people took this stuff so damned seriously. I am DESPERATE to throw my hat into the ring and take on these virtual dumpster divers! IMO I think I could have quite a scrap.

I learned so much! Punctuated with LMAO, LOL, OMG and IMO I learned that I was snarky, immature, ugly, a misanthrope-but probably because I was sexually abused. I learned that I hated James and did not teach him to knit. That I bullied James and ‘hated’ on him. I had my words maligned, insulted, ‘hated’ on. I am, apparently, a disgrace to gay people. I learned that there were people trawling my facebook page-so all the people I don’t know have now been removed. I learned that homophobia is alive and KICKING!

For people who seem to hate the haters there sure is a great deal of hate!

LMAO! Oh you people! How you have amused me during the past few weeks.

“I’m 24 and I’ve heard that my generation and people that are teens right now are some of the most narcissistic people ever. But I think it’s just because with more technology and things, the people who might have been overprotective or felt stifled as children who want to raise their kids the opposite way might be able to spoil their kids more. There have always been people like that, it’s just more noticeable now..”

LOL. And with scintillating insights like that who needs 19th century literature?

One particularly astute commentator opined that the British were apt to be socially insensitive. Rude. Well, we’re not rude..we are direct. We say what we mean and we are not, as a nation, or as individuals so sensitive to the naked truth as you the Americans. I spent hours in my dorm at school being viciously rude to my class mates and they to me. It made us howl with laughter. We LOVE a good insult/irony.

Consequently, we will punish Tony Blair for war crimes and tax our bankers for profiteering. What, you may be thinking, does that have to do with price of cheese? Work it out amongst yourselves. I am sure ONE of you will have an ‘opinion’.

OMG after reading the posts-and I could not stop they were so addictive-I thought to myself, well producers-you did a great job! An amazing job of creating the goodies and the baddies and I am one of the baddies! To many, many viewers I am just a vicious queen! And so be it. What you think of me is none of my business. It’s true!

“Between his blog, his twitter page, his facebook page, and God only knows what other type of self promotion he’s doing he has got to be the most vain S.O.B. out there! UGH! His whiny, childish behavior is disgusting. Honestly, grow up honey. And yea I will admit when the show first began I found Duncan very charming, funny, etc. and so I did read his blogs, twitter page, etc. but its like the more he talks the more I dislike him.”

LMAO every time I read a vile comment like that my cock got harder. LITERALLY. I look at my own reaction to the hate and I realize that I still have a very long way to go.

And lastly..for you clever, clever people-a little context: When making Sex Rehab there were 350 hours of real time footage shot on 20 cameras. That’s approx 7,000 hours of footage squeezed into a chilling 344 minutes of TV.

LOL.

And finally my most favorite line:

“Duncan has a meanstreak that he gets away with because his sex appeal is soooo appealing. The reason men face-fuck him and leave him is because a meanstreak is only tolerable for as long as it takes to orgasm.”

A woman could only have written IMO the idea that I would want a relationship with anyone I had blown is frankly absurd.

There is no debate what so ever about the way we treat ourselves. Any criticism by straights is considered homophobic and any attempt at healthy debate by those of us who care passionately about our collective mental health is described as self loathing.

It’s easy to slash at Moir’s ugly mug it’s not so easy to look at her crude message and learn from it. Some of what that ghastly woman hinted at may be true. It’s a pity that we weren’t having that conversation first.

I recently put grindr on my iPhone and had to take it off within a week as with gaydar/manhunt/adam4adam etc. I became immediately addicted to the endless stream of available men within meters of wherever I was. We are NOT like straight people. We behave quite differently and it does us no good to pretend otherwise.

I have learned a great deal about shame based behavior in therapy and as a community of men we are particularly vulnerable.

Certainly from my experience as a drug toting slag I ended up feeling soulless and plagued by shame.

Gately may not have died because of excessive drug use, sex addiction etc. but many gay men are. Perhaps we need to start getting honest about what is really going on in our community rather than let the Daily Mail read between the lines.